Indigenous leaders optimistic on new law

OTTAWA • Indigenous leaders expressed optimism Friday that the federal government is finally trying to fix a child-welfare system that has become Canada’s modern version of residential schools.

Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott intends to introduce legislation early in the new year that would enshrine principles for Indigenous child welfare into federal law, she announced, including community control over decisions made for children and no longer using poverty alone to justify taking children from their parents.

The broad strokes of the bill were set over the last year in consultation with Indigenous leaders and families after years of cries from Indigenous parents that their children were not receiving the care they deserved.

The federal government is responsible for child welfare on reserves but has chronically underfunded the agencies that provide it. Children placed in foster care, however, are cared for by the provincial authorities that handle child welfare for everyone else.

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2016 ruled the federal government discriminated against First Nations children on reserves because the only way they got the same child-welfare funding and programming as other kids in Canada was if they were taken into care, often in non-Indigenous households far from their home communities. And those arrangements have their own problems.

The tribunal ruling came almost a decade after the Assembly of First Nations and

THIS IS OUR MODERN-DAY VARIATION ON THE LEGACY OF RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS.

the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society made a human-rights complaint about the issue. Every year that passed, more and more children were taken into care.

“This is our modern-day variation on the legacy of residential schools,” said Philpott.

She said children placed in foster care are at great risk for homelessness, incarceration, human trafficking, suicide and homicide.

Nationally, more than half the kids in foster care are Indigenous. In some provinces, such as Manitoba, that number is close to 90 per cent. Philpott said about 80 per cent of the time the reason kids are apprehended is on allegations of “neglect” — but really that just means their families are poor.

“I reject the term ‘neglect’ as a satisfactory explanation for why a child should be apprehended,” she said.